Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[maximus123123]

It's not about the lag.
It's about trying to make a nerf to TWF more palatable.
Otherwise they could have made the same changes while scaling TWF to the same DPS as it is currently.

[Natashaelle]

STWF, in the context of DDO, stands for Superior Two Weapon Fighting. The only occurrence of Superior Two Weapon Fighting in any official 3.0 or 3.5 D&D material, that I am aware of, is in regards to ettins (a two-headed monster race) where its description is "An ettin fights with a morningstar or javelin in each hand. Because each of its two heads controls an arm, the ettin does not take a penalty on attack or damage rolls for attacking with two weapons."

I've just been doing a bit of research, and there are several monsters, not just the ettin, that have Superior Two Weapon/Multi Weapon Fighting as an ability, usually justified by the weapons somehow being controlled by different "heads" or other sources of control.

The only unofficial descriptions that I have seen of STWF as a Feat are the one that i linked to earlier (they provide no information of the source(s) they are using), and another *unofficial* description which is completely unlike both the Monster manual version and Turbine's proposed Feat. I cannot lay my hands on a more official D&D website where I have, unless I'm mistaken, also seen it mentioned as a Feat, rather than as a special ability.

Before you go on to claim that you meant Supreme Two Weapon Fighting, let me do a little bit of preemptive refutation: the feats is, like Superior Two Weapon Fighting, no where to be seen on Wizards' official 3.5 D&D list which suggests no supplement offers it as a general feat; it is, to the bets of my knowledge, only available to master of the Wild's Tempest prestige class so there is no reason for it to be available as a general feat; and it's still not called Superior Two Weapon Fighting so, even if you were to refute the two previous points, the position that Superior Two Weapon Fighting is a made up feat still stands.

Thank you for this information -- it does seem to clarify what the Turbine devs may have been aiming for with the Tempest PrE in DDO.

Squabbling about nomenclature seems to ba a little counterproductive nonetheless, compared to the clear design goal on Turbine's part to provide for some 2WF specialists in their MMO.

[error55o]

No it's not. What you see as a "server" is an "instance of the DD) world" - there are many machines that make up that world

your kinda over generalising how servers work a bit there, an instant would be on ONE server but no way is there loads of servers per instance, a server can handle many many many instances of what ever the players are doing on there, be them raids, be them quests, be them public area's, servers can do all the above and prolly a lot more :P

[Natashaelle]

You mean 'zero'?

So, you think that glancing blows and a chance to proc various special attacks on secondary targets while using S&B will have "zero" consequences to S&B ?

... riiiight ....

Because we need more Fighters and Barbarians right?

To all these people that claim TWF is unmatched DPS

I cannot recall making any such claim.

Listen carefully, because this is important.

Barbarians are chosen because they can be relied upon to not lose aggro. To anyone.

Please stop being so patronising ... besides, my battle cleric does occasionally steal aggro from various barbarians in both Shroud and ToD. Sometimes, I simply elect to go duo tanking with the designated tank to avoid Harry in Shroud part 5 and Sally in VoD, in particular, facing anywhere except in the right direction.

And since aggro is a direct measure of DPS, that means the Barbarian is doing the most damage out of anyone in the party.

Apart from all which, it should be crystal clear to anyone with any experience at all of DDO that Barbarians produce more DPS than any other character class in the game.

DPS is the most significant, but not the only, contributor towards Hate generation. Defender PrE and some gear you can wear also contribute towards grabbing aggro. There may be some hidden contributing factors as well, such as your alignment and fighting against a favoured enemy -- but I'm not at all sure about that.

[error55o]

lol, my rogue steals agro a lot, I just thought there was a new random agro thing, you guys saying my rogue is a uber rogue? xD

[geoffhanna]

You have to keep in mind one other thing tho...Turbine is also trying to fix popularity.......this is the beginning of probably a more mainstream MMO player friendly model rather than a niche one.

I'm not saying I am for or against it, but they will probably get a lot more people if complexity of gameplay and character creation is toned down ... <snip> ...

I hope you are wrong. For years now one company after another has tried to make games more WoW-like to attain popularity. Including Turbine. It doesn't work. What does work? Innovation! F2P worked because this is an awesome game and no one else was doing it.

Dumbing down the game to try and appeal to different players is a mistake. A trap.

Vive la differance!

[Angelus_dead]

[*]It requires a second head, which is an important omission.

Sadly, Turbine doesn't have the technical resources to catch up to the competition on that feature.

[error55o]

I hope you are wrong. For years now one company after another has tried to make games more WoW-like to attain popularity. Including Turbine. It doesn't work. What does work? Innovation! F2P worked because this is an awesome game and no one else was doing it.

Dumbing down the game to try and appeal to different players is a mistake. A trap.

Vive la differance!

/Agreed

[zealous]

However Shade does. His response? NONE! Reason?

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=805
I see him using the words extreme and nerf in close proximity.

Proper twitching does NOT have you move at the time of attack. Since you aren't moving at the time of the attack, you'll still get full glancing blows.

Do you even play this game?
Link to your 2h characters myDDO page immediately or else you're in no position to be posting in this thread!!!

Second animation of standing chain, first animation of moving chain (the one with a glancing blow).

You do not get full glancing blows, you get 1/2 instead of 3/4.

It was mentioned somewhere else that Bastard Swords and Dwarven Axes will get Glancing Blows with S&B. Of course Glancing Blows do a fraction of your damage, and S&B does very gimpy damage so this is practically a cosmetic feature... and one that only affects dwarf S&B characters, as it doesn't suddenly make the Bastard Sword worth taking. Or the Dwarven Axe, for that matter (but dwarves get it for free).

Glancing blow provides 0.3*(base damage + 30) and has 100% proc for FB vicious damage as well as KOTC stuff.
10-20% is a fraction of your damage, it is however a quite large fraction.

So why Barbarian? Well, the hit points are nice. But the real reason is because if the tank loses aggro, he will turn around and attack the party.

Listen carefully, because this is important.

Barbarians are chosen because they can be relied upon to not lose aggro. To anyone.

And since aggro is a direct measure of DPS, that means the Barbarian is doing the most damage out of anyone in the party.

You know the strangest thing, I've regularly seen barbs loose aggro to 2wfers with threat reduction. I've even seen a barb loose aggro to a wis built monk lacking ToD rings!

[rezo]

After try to read the pages of pages of pages can anyone tell me if you have spring attack will the THF Glancing blow be effected???

[Imnisc]

Im sure the coding team (well lets be real, the guy sharing desk with the janitor in the basement ) has explored this, but just in case:

If you want to reduce work from collision checks on attacks, do them a bunch at a time.
Client knows how many attacks are likely to come in the next round, so instead of asking server
'did this attack connect?'
ask
'there are 5 attacks coming in the next round with so and so collision sphere, do they connect?'.

Player moving or mob moving/dying etc. cause a new query ofcourse.
For running battles the savings are not that great, but could catch the double attacks from twf.
For boss beatdowns the savings are great and thats where theyre most needed.

[Razcar]

How is decreasing DPS "downgrading content"?

Killing builds. I see builds as content in DDO, since it is such a fun, complex and important part of this game - especially compared to what they call "builds" in other MMOs.

[maximus123123]

THF should be nerfed and so should Epic Sword of Shadow.

As it is, the easiest thing to do is make a maxed out strength+constitution barb or fighter and then take the THF chain of feats.

Those in combination with glancing attacks and twitching attacks (not to mention the Epic Sword of Shadows) make THF by far the most extreme form of DPS in the game all while allowing the player to maintain maximum Hit Points (as opposed to the stat spread a TWF has to do). And AC is not even a consideration in epic so that the dex doesn't help unlike the ability to place all points in constitution and strength that a THF currently has.

NERF TWITCHING THF. NERF GLANCING BLOWS. AND NERF EPIC SOS.

[Aspenor]

I saw a good point in this thread. Eladrin, have you attempted to discern the source of the memory leaks that were found when switching characters? My theory on this matter was proven, but for some reason I can't seem to find the thread using the forums search.

[Therilith]

Killing builds.

Only if those builds are balanced as it is. The devs don't seem to think so.

[maximus123123]

Only if those builds are balanced as it is. The devs don't seem to think so.

The devs don't play this game...they listen to people like Shade and Borror0 to make it.

That's why THF is king and ranged combat is the weakest.

[Borror0]

I saw a good point in this thread. Eladrin, have you attempted to discern the source of the memory leaks that were found when switching characters? My theory on this matter was proven, but for some reason I can't seem to find the thread using the forums search.

The forum search has been broken since the same day where they had the problem which downgraded several premium users to free.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I hope you are wrong. For years now one company after another has tried to make games more WoW-like to attain popularity. Including Turbine. It doesn't work. What does work? Innovation! F2P worked because this is an awesome game and no one else was doing it.

Dumbing down the game to try and appeal to different players is a mistake. A trap.

Vive la differance!

Well, I certainly hope your right...I personally like the game how it is......but you can't help but to notice how much simple it is now than it used to be.

Solo'ing used to be something only a skilled player with resources could accomplish once u got to a certain level of quest.....now anyone can do it, even a brand new player all the way to cap. No this is not all about solo'ing, I was just using that as an example of how much the game has changed in the last few months.

I don't think DDO will ever simplify to the point of being WoW like, I do think they plan on simplifying to the point of making it more accessible for a broader range of players tho.

[Razcar]

You know the strangest thing, I've regularly seen barbs loose aggro to 2wfers with threat reduction. I've even seen a barb loose aggro to a wis built monk lacking ToD rings!

Since the DDO barbarian is a class specifically tailored for mouth-breathing 8 year old boys that likes to constantly squeek over VC about their crit numbers, you'll see this once in a while.

When the barb is played and built by an adult (hey, it happens ) you won't see this.

[SquelchHU]

So, you think that glancing blows and a chance to proc various special attacks on secondary targets while using S&B will have "zero" consequences to S&B ?

... riiiight ....

S&B is way behind. To catch up, they need a MASSIVE boost. Something that does not do this is invalid. They will be irrelevant before, and irrelevant after. The only thing it does is trick those that don't know better into thinking that they're fine now.

I cannot recall making any such claim.

That was a general statement.

Please stop being so patronising ... besides, my battle cleric does occasionally steal aggro from various barbarians in both Shroud and ToD. Sometimes, I simply elect to go duo tanking with the designated tank to avoid Harry in Shroud part 5 and Sally in VoD, in particular, facing anywhere except in the right direction.

Must be some gimpy barbarians.

DPS is the most significant, but not the only, contributor towards Hate generation. Defender PrE and some gear you can wear also contribute towards grabbing aggro. There may be some hidden contributing factors as well, such as your alignment and fighting against a favoured enemy -- but I'm not at all sure about that.

Defender is +200% hate.

Which means you need at least about 220 DPS to be sure of holding aggro. On a S&B character, this is... difficult... Despite the fact that even Monks, who are not exactly regarded as DPS top out at about double this number.

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=805
I see him using the words extreme and nerf in close proximity.

Really? Must have missed that line.

Do you even play this game?
Link to your 2h characters myDDO page immediately or else you're in no position to be posting in this thread!!!

Second animation of standing chain, first animation of moving chain (the one with a glancing blow).

You do not get full glancing blows, you get 1/2 instead of 3/4.

I loled. So you're saying I quoted Shade wrong? Ok, I can buy that.